


Abstersus Est

by solaciolum



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: AC Kinkmeme, Jossed, M/M, Mindfuck, pre-canon nonsense, rampant unfounded canon speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-20
Updated: 2010-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-23 19:41:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solaciolum/pseuds/solaciolum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Desmond encounters a strange glyph in Venezia; it leads him places he never would have expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abstersus Est

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a kinkmeme prompt asking for any sort of Desmond/Subject 16. Since the glyphs turned me into a gibbering, terrified wreck, I ended up writing ridiculous bad-touch mindrape. This is not Brotherhood canon-compliant in the slightest, and engages in a lot of somewhat bizarre canon speculation.

Desmond could feel his synchronization with Ezio slipping; it was easy to lose track of "real" time when years could pass in the blink of an eye in the Animus, but he was pretty sure he'd been under longer than usual. Or maybe Ezio was just tired; he misjudged a leap across one of Venezia's canals and hit the water with a curse and a splash.

Murky green water closed over him, and for a disorienting moment he couldn't tell up from down. Something glimmered in front of him, blazing a furious red when his eagle vision kicked in reflexively. _A Glyph? Down here?_ Rebecca hadn't said anything about a glyph in this part of the city, but what the hell.

He reached out towards the sign, letting fragments of encrypted computer code wash over him- and everything went white.

"Oh, that's great, Desmond, just go diving into every bit of manky code you see, that's not going to make my life difficult at _all_. Are you getting any of this, Rebecca?"

"No, it's like I'm stuck on a loading screen or something. Desmond? Desmond! Shit, he's gone completely off the monitor."

"Well, get him back _on_ , then. Or just pull the plug, it was almost time to take him out anyway."

"You want him to turn into a vegetable, Shaun?"

"Wouldn't be much of a difference from his usual brilliant demeanor, would it?"

" _Shaun_. Desmond, don't worry, just hang on and we'll get you out of there...wherever you are."

The last echoes of Shaun and Rebecca's voices faded away as Desmond opened his eyes. He was surrounded by endless sqruiming whiteness, like the Animus loading screen- and he was _himself_ , hoodie and jeans and sneakers, not Ezio or Altaïr.

"...worked. It worked?"

Desmond turned around with a start, and found himself face to face with...his own face. "What the hell?" His threshold for the incredibly weird and unsettling had expanded exponentially ever since Abstergo had kidnapped him- but even after that whole mess with the Vault in Rome and Minerva, this was just a little ridiculous.

It wasn't exactly his face- it was like a bad copy, all the details just slightly wrong. It was still creepy as fuck, especially when he spoke, voice stuttering and mechanical. "I didn't think it would work, didn't think anyone would find me. I've been waiting here, in the code. You saw the other pieces, right? My other clues?" His face flickered with ghostly afterimages of broken code.

Desmond stepped back. The voice was familiar. "Subject sixteen?"

"Yes." He hissed the final consonant, voice glitching. "I uploaded my memories, uploaded my _self_ \- what was left of me, anyway." He laughed, that same mad, hysterical laughter Desmond had heard too many times in unlocking the Glyph codes. "Hacked into the memory core and hid, waiting, sleeping, until someone rebooted the system. And here you are. Here _we_ are. What number are you?"

"Seventeen. Uh. My name is Desmond Miles." Desmond rubbed the back of his neck, unsure of how to respond to Sixteen's laughter or his shifting faces.

"Subject Seventeen. My successor." Sixteen bared his teeth- Desmond was pretty sure it wasn't meant to be a smile. " _Desmond_. Abstergo must _love_ you, now that they've got you. I'll bet they don't even realize it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're the one they were looking for, the one who could lead them to their precious Apple." The landscape flickered, and Acre sprang up around them out of the nothingness. Sixteen perched on the topmost cross of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, peering down at Desmond. "I couldn't do it. They put me through hundreds of memories- _thousands_ of them, with the Bleeding Effect getting worse every second they kept me under- but I just couldn't get into Altaïr. The Apple didn't want me. It wanted you, and it didn't care how many people got torn to pieces until it found you."

Sixteen rose to his feet and spread his arms; his silhouette flickered, spewing glittering bits of code. "I do not wish to speak with you, but _through_ you. It is done. The message is delivered. The rest is up to you, Desmond."

Minerva's words sent a chill down his spine. "You saw it too?" he demanded. The thought of getting some answers, finally, was overwhelming. "The inside of the Vault- you saw it? What the fuck _was_ that?"

"Of course I saw it." Sixteen stared down at him with eyes that glowed Animus-white in the harsh desert sunlight. "I've seen everything."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" The sky darkened suddenly, black clouds rolling over the city in fast-forward. Desmond clung to the arms of the cross to keep from being knocked off by the sudden wind that began to blow. "Hey!" He had to shout to hear himself over the gale. "I want some answers- what does everyone _want_ from me? What am I supposed to do next?"

"You'll figure it out eventually. Enjoy your ignorance while it lasts." Sixteen leapt off the edge of the cross, falling into the perfect swan dive of a leap of faith. His voice crackled and stuttered, echoing off the spires as he fell. "For in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow."

Desmond gathered himself to follow when the landscape flickered again, pulling Jerusalem out from under his feet. The office at Abstergo formed around him.

"Home sweet home! It hasn't changed a bit since I left." Sixteen sat down in Vidic's chair and swiveled in a circle. "The decor is a little chilly, but the wake up service is second to none."

Desmond remembered waking up to Vidic standing over his bed, and shuddered. "I'm not at Abstergo anymore- Lucy got us out, to a safehouse." Outside the giant windows, Desmond could see more of that endless Animus-white blankness. But there were shapes in it now, hulking, body-sized forms that flickered like weak shadows in Eagle Vision. He tried not to look at them, but it felt like they were staring even when he put his back to the window.

"Lucy? She's still there?" He stopped spinning and leapt to his feet, planting his hands on Vidic's desk. "She took you away from this place and you _trusted_ her?"

"Given the option between getting the fuck out and staying with Abstergo? Yeah, I took a real big leap of faith right there." Desmond crossed his arms defiantly. "She still blames herself for your death, you know."

"She should." He laughed, doubling over in hysterics. The visuals glitched, and he was standing still again, calmly. "Did you see the way I redecorated? I did it just for you, you know. For the ones who came after me."

"Yeah. The eagle vision picks up old bloodstains." Desmond took a few slow, careful steps backward, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck raising. He glanced at the door; he didn't doubt that it was locked- and he sure as hell didn't want to take a chance with the windows, not with those shapes out there. _Shaun and Rebecca, if you get me out of here I swear I will never bother you while you're working ever again._ But Shaun and Rebecca couldn't hear him.

"I don't think you can really appreciate the effect without seeing it in person, Seventeen." Sixteen gestured expansively, and the walls shuddered. Bloodstains bloomed across every surface in familiar patterns.

"They drained my soul and made it theirs," Sixteen hissed, stalking across the room to get in Desmond's face. "I drain my body to show you- look, Seventeen." He pointed back towards the Animus.

Sixteen lay across it in a pool of his own blood, screaming obscenities in a language Desmond couldn't understand. Lucy stood over him, frantically trying to staunch the bleeding. Her arms were bloody to the elbow. "Oh god, *****." A hiss of static drowned out her voice when she said his name. "This wasn't supposed to happen. I'm so sorry, we fucked up so badly and I'm _so sorry_ -"

"Lucy? Lucy, my love." Sixteen lifted a gory hand to touch her face. "It's- it's okay. Everything is okay. It's time to go."

The memory turned and looked directly at Desmond, blood bubbling from the corner of his mouth. " _She sees me raise the knife._ "

Desmond saw it too, watched as Sixteen sat up and lunged for her throat, the sharp piece of metal gleaming wetly with Sixteen's blood. The memory slowed down until Desmond could practically count the frames, the knife inching closer and closer to Lucy's neck, skipping forward every time the memory hit a glitch. The audio glitched too, and all Desmond could hear was static.

Gunshot broke the static, and time resumed. Sixteen jerked with the knife a bare centimeter from Lucy's throat and coughed, spattering blood all over her white shirt, her face, her hair. Vidic stood in the doorway, gun in hand. "Next time I give you an order, Miss Stillman, remember this moment. Don't forget that I saved your life here."

Vidic and Lucy dissolved into code, leaving Desmond alone with Sixteen and the memory of Sixteen's body bleeding across the Animus.

Blood dripped onto the floor. Outside, the shapes in the shadows pressed closer to the glass. "Vidic did this to you. _Abstergo_ killed you, and Lucy- she was trying to _help_ you-"

"It was her fault! The _Assassins_ did this to me- who do you think _volunteered_ me for Abstergo's experiment? They want our bloodline just as much as the T-t-templars do." His voice stuttered, crackling with static. "How do you think Abstergo found you?"

"My motorcycle license-"

"Bzzt! _Wrong._ " Sixteen laughed, advancing on Desmond. "Maybe that helped them pick you up, but your f-f-family was living off the grid for generations. They shouldn't have known you even _existed_ , Seventeen."

"My name is _Desmond_." He was on the defensive; this couldn't be true, he didn't want it to be true. He _trusted_ Lucy, and he'd spent nine long years on the run, not trusting anybody. The Assassins were supposed to be the _good guys_.

" _I know your fucking name!_ " Sixteen and his corpse screamed at him in unison. They both glitched, and the bloody memory disappeared, leaving Sixteen with the knife in his hand. "Do you know mine? Did she tell you? Did you even think to _ask_? I uploaded as much of myself as I could before they killed me, but I ran out of time. I still have all of _them_." He pointed to the windows, where the shadows had begun to resolve into faces. "But I lost _myself_." His face flickered into a featureless blur. "They took _everything_. And they'll do the same thing to you, because you're too stupid to see the truth. I've been trying to tell you. But you- you just won't listen."

He pushed Desmond back against the bloody Animus, impossibly strong in this impossible place. "Do you know what it's like, living in the code? It's cold, Seventeen. It's cold and it's d-d-dark and I tried to get r-rid of them, but they were buried too deep." He glitched again, and suddenly he was Ezio, then Altaïr, then someone else whose face Desmond recognized too well- because they were all his face, his body. Outside, a thousand tortured memories beat silently at the glass, their faces twisted in agonized screams.

The blood soaking into Desmond's clothing was warm, but Sixteen's lips were cold as he crushed their mouths together. He pulled at the zipper of Desmond's hoodie with the hand not holding a knife, and no matter how hard Desmond struggled, he couldn't move.

"Let me go," he gasped when Sixteen released his mouth. Panic tried to rise up through the lethargy, but all he could do was shudder weakly as Sixteen sliced open his t-shirt. "Look, just let me get out of here, and I'll talk to Rebecca- she knows all about programming things, we'll figure something out, we'll find a way to save you-"

"That won't be necessary, Seventeen, not with you right here." He kissed Desmond again, lines of binary code making his eyes glow. "I'm glad you were the one who found me, and not some other poor bastard like me. Someone else would've bled out the same way I did, but you- you're a survivor. It's why they w-w-wanted you. You'll be fine." He unfastened Desmond's jeans.

This wasn't happening. This was _impossible_ , this couldn't be happening- he still couldn't move, even with Sixteen pulling away the rest of his clothes, drawing a line down Desmond's chest with his tongue. Desmond stared at the ceiling and thought about screaming, but his voice refused to do more than moan. There was a disorienting moment where everything was flickering, and time jumped ahead; somehow, they'd both ended up naked in the moments Desmond had lost. Sixteen was leaning over him, bare skin against bare skin, spreading Desmond's legs open.

"Don't you get it, Seventeen? None of this is real." His cock pressed in slowly; Desmond whimpered, praying for another glitch so he could lose this moment, too, but everything was thrown into sharp focus, from the harsh flickering of the flourescent lights to the cooling slickness of the blood pooled beneath him and the inexorable, torturously slow thrust of Sixteen's cock into his body. He moaned, not because it hurt, but because it was too much all at once- too many lives, too much time flooding through his brain. The windows were cracking, straining beneath the pressure of the memories behind them.

Was he Desmond, trapped in some sort of programming subroutine, being fucked by a ghost? Was he Altaïr, seeking absolution for the sin of pride? Or Ezio- poor, damned Ezio, losing pieces of himself to the Apple and taking comfort in the embrace of his only friend? Or a hundred, thousand others- men and women, Assassins and Templars- was this the office in Abstergo, or Paris during the Revolution? The tower at Masyaf, a whorehouse in Venice, the farm he grew up on- Desmond squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember how to breathe, but Sixteen kissed him again, and he forgot that, too. _None of this is real._

"I don't want to hurt you, I just want you to _see_." He wrapped his hand around Desmond's cock and jerked roughly. "I'm dead, remember? This is just a computer program, a piece of corrupted code. You don't want to end up like me."

Sixteen felt warm now- burning hot, even, as his hips moved with a rhythm that was familiar a thousand times over. It was agonizing, it was amazing, he wanted _more_ , he just wanted it to stop, he didn't know what he wanted- and he had enough control over his body to clutch at Sixteen's shoulders and hold on, even as every movement shattered something inside of him.

His eagle vision kicked in, lighting up the world in flashes of blue and gold. Sixteen was like a black hole in front of him, around him, inside him, swallowing up the light. "Nothing is true," Desmond moaned, bucking up into Sixteen's hand.

"That's right. You're getting it now." He thrust harder, pushing Desmond's legs up and further apart to find a deeper angle. Desmond clung to the sensation, focusing on _here_ and _now_ , ignoring the memories that weren't his, forcing past the rush of foreign thoughts and images burning through his brain.

"So close. You're _so close_." Sixteen kissed him again, thrusting his tongue into Desmond's mouth. He tasted like blood. _This isn't real._ Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

Something broke inside of him with an audible _crack_ \- but it was the windows, finally giving way, shattering and drowning the Abstergo office in a flood of screaming light. Sixteen was fucking him on the empty plain of the Animus loading screen now, and Desmond could move, could bury his hands in Sixteen's hair and kiss back, wrapping his legs around Sixteen's hips and pulling him closer, _deeper_. It felt like his skin was crackling with electricity, blue and gold and burning, blistering every nerve ending.

Sixteen laughed, his voice sliding into all the cracks in Desmond's fevered mind as his hands and mouth delved into all the aching, needy places on Desmond's body. "There you are." His hand tightened on Desmond's cock, and he bit down hard on Desmond's collarbone, hard enough to draw blood, except he couldn't bleed here, and shattered fragments of binary burst beneath his skin instead. "You'll be fine." And Desmond could feel him coming, feel Sixteen filling him, flowing into him, sinking beneath his skin.

Desmond screamed, spine arching, hands clawing at nothingness- pain/pleasure/memory/agony hit him like the ground at the end of a poorly judged leap of faith, only he was still falling, down and down, deeper into the Animus, and then everything was just white,

white,

 _white_.

\- - - -

"Okay, I think it's fixed now. We should be able to break the connection and get Desmond out."

"About bloody time- we lost almost a whole day on this little glitch of yours."

"Enough, Shaun. _You_ weren't offering any helpful suggestions while Rebecca was fixing the code. Let's just be glad it's over, and call it a night, okay?"

The whiteness receded slowly, replaced by darkness and a strange, rhythmic thundering noise. His heartbeat. There was an IV in his right arm- the Animus 2.0. And on his left arm- a hidden blade.

He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. The safe house was familiar, comforting. Shaun was there, trying desperately to hide his concern behind a wall of irritated sarcasm. And there was Rebecca, looking relieved. And next to her-

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Desmond." It was supposed to be a joke, but considering the circumstances, it fell a little flat.

"Lucy." He smiled, testing the expression. It felt a little strange on his face. "It's good to be back."

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of Subject 16 here was heavily influenced by repeated listenings to [DJ Schmolli- Bulletproof Radar (La Roux vs. Britney Spears)](http://audioporncentral.com/2009/08/apc-birthday-week-our-present-copycat-dj-schmolli.html). (Scroll down towards the bottom to get to the song.) Upon reflection, I think this makes me a bad person- or at the very least, a person with a _terrible_ sense of humor.
> 
> The Latin in the title comes from the verb "abstergere," which means "to wipe clean." "Abstergo" is the first person present form- "I wipe clean;" "abstersus est" is the passive participle, and translates roughly to "he is (being) wiped clean." The more you know!


End file.
